CHAPTER 2
I find myself back at Honeys a few nights later against my better judgment. I’m getting to know a few of the guys on the Vegas Aces since I was just traded here from Chicago, and I guess this is the place where they like to hang.
Tonight I’m out with Cory Marshall and Jaxon Bryant, two guys who are a little younger than me but who are definitely always up for a good time.
Cory’s a beer drinker like me, but Jaxon is trying to stay in shape ahead of training camp—something I should probably be doing too instead of drinking my ass off, but I’ll get in season shape when I need to.
I’ve managed to do it every season for the last nine years.
We avoid the private rooms when we first arrive, instead opting to watch the dancers on the big stage. Jaxon is recognized first, and it’s enough of a distraction that a hostess offers us a private room. We head in, and wouldn’t you know it?
The dancer who walks half-naked into our room first is the same one I banged a couple nights ago.
And I can’t remember her name.
It was some sort of animal. Right?
Foxy?
Bunny?
Lambchop?
Shit. I should know this. It will come to me…I think.
This is just a small part of why I’m a one and done kind of guy. Then I don’t have to remember names.
I still haven’t washed away the feelings I had after our tryst the other night.
It’s somewhere between guilt and regret, with neither feeling really being strong enough to emerge as a true winner.
Mostly I just brushed it off, but now that she’s back in here dancing again and I haven’t had sex since the nice lady on the boat the day after I was with this stripper whose name is escaping me, I’m probably toasted enough tonight to accept an invitation should she offer one.
She dances on the small stage in this room first, showing off her skills on the pole and reminding me that while it wasn’t the best sex of my life, it was still pretty damn good.
I don’t even know who I’d name as the best sex of my life. There are a few top contenders, I suppose. A few wild ones that might edge out the quieter ones, but they’re all starting to run together at this point.
It shouldn’t feel that way.
Maybe I need a second time with Bunny. Foxy?
Maybe that’s my problem. They all run together because they’re all basically carbon copies.
They want to be with a football player, they post their conquest to social media, and that’s it.
I get a night of fun, they get bragging rights, and we all move forward with our lives.
I guess it’s just starting to feel a little empty.
It’s not that I really want anything more than that…
but it does get a little lonely. It’s starting to feel a little rinse and repeat, if I’m being honest—despite the fact that I’m in a new city.
It’s a whole new crop of women, but they want the same thing.
In Chicago, winters were cold and there were a lot of layers to unravel.
Here in Vegas, though, the heat is turned all the way up, the clothes are skimpy, and the women are eager.
I guess if I’m going to make a change, now is the time.
I don’t want to change it, though.
In fact, I can’t change it.
It’s the life I chose, and it’s become my entire brand at this point. I don’t have a choice.
The companies that reach out to me for endorsements usually want me to sell to their audience—which is men like me.
Men who drink alcohol, men who love sports, men who use razors and drive cars and eat soup and do laundry.
The list goes on, but the brands who reach out to me want to give their customers the experience of what it’s like to live like The Big O.
I’m known for making clutch plays on the field and living a dream life off it.
I make more from endorsements than I do from my league paycheck, though I don’t exactly have anything to complain about there.
So I’m not quite sure where these new feelings are coming from.
Maybe it’s because I’m in a new city again—the third place I’ve lived in the years I’ve been playing my favorite game professionally.
New cities, new women, fighting for my spot on my teams. It seems like the only constants in my life are chaos and upheaval.
And I always liked it that way.
In fact, I’ve thrived that way.
But I’m thirty-one now. None of us are getting any younger, obviously, but with each day that passes, I find myself closer and closer to the close of my career.
I’ve still got years left in me barring any unforeseen circumstances, but this isn’t the type of career that lasts forever.
When I’m done…then what?
It’s the question that keeps coming back to plague my mind, and instead of answering that nagging call, I drown it out with another beer.
When it continues to sound off despite my attempt to silence it…well, then it’s time to do something about it.
The stripper climbs onto my lap and it’s only a few moments before I find myself kissing her again. I’m not sure if I lean forward first or if she does, but our mouths collide somewhere in the middle.
Jaxon and Cory whoop beside me with encouragement, and another stripper walks in a minute later to entertain the two of them while this one entertains me.
Nobody here is going to stop me. Nobody here is going to tell me this is a bad idea.
Beer and sex spur me into action as my hands move along her thighs while she gyrates over me. I deepen the kiss. I know she’s a fun time, so when her mouth moves toward my ear and she murmurs, “I want you inside me again,” before biting my earlobe, I stand with her still straddling my waist.
“Where?” I grunt as I set her down, and she grabs my hand and pulls me out of the private room, down a long hallway, through a stock room, and out a back door.
We’re outside behind the club, and I have her up against the brick wall in two seconds flat, my fingers wrapped around her neck so I can feel her pulse racing beneath my touch.
I don’t bother with foreplay. She was just grinding on my cock for the last five minutes while she danced over me. Instead, I pull out the monster and secure a condom.
She grabs on around my neck and hoists herself up so she’s straddling my waist, and it’s not like she’s wearing that many clothes to begin with. I slip the tiny string of fabric out of the way and jam my cock inside her.
It doesn’t matter that it’s an April night in Vegas with perfect temps in the upper seventies…there’s enough fire between the two of us to keep us warm.
I grunt as I start to move. I pummel into her as I brace her against the brick wall, and she winces with a little pain at the rough edges against her naked skin.
Her tits bounce up and down, and if a cop were to drive back here right now, we’d probably both be charged with indecent exposure.
But as her seven-inch platform heels dig into my ass, I’m not sure I care.
She’s not quiet as she lets me know she’s enjoying what I’m doing, but I can see the pain on her face as she twists her mouth. I pull out of her and drop her from the wall, and her eyes flash with annoyance before I spin her around.
“Bend over,” I say, and she perches her pretty ass up into the air for me. She braces her hands on the wall, and I see the red scratch marks from the bricks even in the darkness of the alley back here.
I slide into her from behind, and that feels better for both of us.
When I close my eyes and tip my head back to just enjoy the pleasure, a face flashes through my mind…and it’s not the face of the woman I’m currently plowing.
I shake my head to get it out.
Why the hell would Kaylee Dalton pop into my thoughts right now?
I haven’t even seen the much younger sister of my best friend in a few years. She was eighteen the last time I saw her—so she was legal, at least. She’s in her twenties now, but she’s still real young. An entire decade younger than me, in fact, and still finishing up her last year of college.
Her face won’t go away. I try to picture page thirty-six of my old playbook to replace the image of her, but her face keeps reappearing.
It’s like she’s telling me that doing this is a bad idea.
And as I find myself getting closer to release, I can’t help but think she’s right.
I pump a little harder, and I slap her ass. Her pussy tightens up at the hit, and mother fucker does it feel good. I do it again, and she screeches out her approval. I yank my dick out of her, rip off the condom and toss it to the ground, and proceed to jerk off toward the finish line.
In other, more eloquent terms…I paint her pretty ass white.
She dips a finger toward her cunt as I finish myself off, and she finishes herself off, too.
I tuck the monster back into the Rugrats boxers I wore since cartoons are the bomb. I zip up my jeans, and now here’s the awkward part.
I don’t have anything to clean my jizz off her ass, for one thing. And for another…well, her next words kill the vibe.
“When can we do this again?” she asks, linking her arms around my neck.
Alarm bells ring through my brain as I try to find the right words to let her down gently through the sex fog.
I wrap an arm around her waist, and I feel a bit of warm stickiness there. Man, I really shot off.
“I’m sorry, babe,” I say, using a generic nickname since I’m pretty sure Bunny is wrong. “I didn’t mean to give you the wrong idea. I don’t really do anything beyond a night or two.” I add the or two in there since I already violated the one-night rule.
Her face falls a little. “Oh, I don’t either, but I figured we could just, you know, be fuck buddies or whatever.”
I don’t really do the fuck buddy thing. The word buddy itself implies that we’re going to be friends, which is more than I want with someone I’ve fucked.
Besides, my dog is named Buddy.
“I have a busy few months coming up,” I lie.
“I’m about to head out of town…it’s just not good timing for me.
” It’s almost time for my annual summer trip, and I’m extending it a little longer than usual this year as I head up to my secret getaway home in the middle of a wildlife sanctuary in Montana.
I can fish all day, ride horses in peace, take trips around the property on an ATV, and hike with Buddy to my heart’s content.
I usually just go for the month of June, but with the trade, I’m going to need to be back for off-season workouts and team meetings.
I’ll commute back and forth as much as I can, which is why I decided to go up for a few weeks in May, too.
“I understand,” she says, but her tone tells me she doesn’t. Not really.
I should care more than I do, and while I do feel bad that she’s upset about it…I can’t change who I am.
Even if I’m starting to want to.